Oxford High School senior Jake Stumph is prowling around the nation's capital, competing at the 2011 Business Professionals of America (BPA) National Leadership Conference May 4-8.

He's there showcasing his computer skills because he placed fifth in the Fundamentals of Web Design category at the BPA state competition held back in late March.

"I think he's going to be right up there, but I'm not sure how high," said OHS teacher Maria Wolbert, one of the advisers to Oxford's BPA chapter.

BPA is the leading Career Technical Student Organization for students pursuing careers in business management, office administration, information technology and other related fields. The group has more than 51,000 members in over 2,300 chapters in 23 states.

During the national competition, Stumph will be required to write XHTML and CSS coding from scratch in order to construct a website that adheres to a desired design structure. He will also take a multiple-choice test that delves heavily into the technical aspects of web page design.

"He's been studying – upping his game. So, we'll see how that goes," Wolbert said.

She noted that Stumph recently won a full ride scholarship to the Specs Howard School of Media Arts for both web design and video media.

Stumph was also selected as the Career & Technical Education (CTE) Student of the Year at OHS. He's taken a number of the school's CTE courses and done "incredibly well in all of them."

"He has all these accolades coming at him right now. It's definitely his year," Wolbert said. "It's just amazing all the extra things that have come his way. He's surprising us left and right."

At the state competition, Stumph also took third place in the Web Site Design Team category along with his partners OHS seniors Elena Simovski and Taylor Wilson.

"That's exceptional for the whole state of Michigan," Wolbert noted.

Unfortunately, only first and second place teams advance to nationals, so Simovski and Wilson couldn't make the trip to D.C. with Stumph.

"They just missed it," Wolbert said.

Also doing well at the state competition was junior Joey Tasch, who placed seventh in Graphic Design Promotion.

"It was great that we were on stage (with medals) in three categories this year," Wolbert said. "We won in only one category last year."

Overall, Oxford had 13 BPA students compete at the state competition.

"I was thrilled that so many students were able to go forward this year," Wolbert said. "They all tried so hard. They were just a magnificent group of students. They really represented Oxford well. You can't win every single time, but they sure tried and they learned a lot in the process."